OT Cheney - Cutting Gas Tax Stupid

That website is treating the unemployment rate as any other investment
statistic, but I doubt there's much use in applying moving averages to
it, at least for guaging the overall economy.

So is the overall employment situation in the US better now than it
was in the 1990s?

 

So was it the Republican Congress of 1994-2006 that's to blame for the
low unemployment and budget surpluses of the Clinton years and higher
unemployment and the deficits of the GW Bush years? You need to
explain this if you believe Congress has been mainly responsible for
steering the economy.

 

Jeff, The definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of
NEGATIVE GROWTH.
Not slowdown. At no time since 2000 has there been a negative growth.
Even the 1st quarter of 08 there was a positive growth of .9% and it has
been getting better since.

 

You really don't get this. It's the Democrats that are responsible for
everything wrong, at all times. Is that simple enough for you?

Geesh, why does this point have to be explained over and over again.
Don't they have the Rush where you are?

 

Use the figures you want, call it what you want: Either way, Bush II
has been an economic disaster (amongst other sorts of disasters).

 

Except in 2001, there was a recession:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession
http://www.nber.org/feldstein/bg120401.html

Jeff

 

And the reasons why are very simple, all of those figures are determined
by the government and there's tremendous political pressure on the
government economists by the party in power to alter their figures
whenever things are bad, economically, to make them look rosy.

In short, there's lies, damn lies, and economic statistics.

The unemployment rate is a phantom. What matters are the number of
jobs created every quarter. We know what our population growth rate
is. We know how many jobs need to be created every quarter to keep
pace with that population growth. The fact of the matter is that under
Bush II we have consistently failed to meet the target. The fact of the
matter is that today, there are fewer jobs in the US when adjusted for
population growth than there were in 2000.

Because of the job loss we have a lot of people who are flat out
underemployed (ie: working part time when they want to work full
time, and suchlike) and we have a lot of people who haven't been
employed AT ALL for years and are living off government assistance.
Why do you think there's so many single women with children
running around and no job? Participation in the food stamp program
has increased every year of the Bush Presidency, the reports are
right here:

http://www.fns.usda.gov/oane/menu/Published/FSP/FSPPartNational.htm

The average American defines their economic well being by the following
very simple item:

Is my after-tax take-home pay higher than it was last year by the same
percentage that my expenses have increased since last year?

If their pay increase has exceeded their expenses, they think they are
doing well. If their pay increase has fallen short of their expense
increase,
they feel they are doing badly.

And when people are doing badly they vote against the incumbent, and
against the incumbent's party.

Right now there's more people in the group where their expense increase
has outpaced their income increase, than in the group where their increase
in income has outpaced the increase in their expenses.

Now you can argue all you want that this is because too many people
have made poor choices in what they have bought, and so forth, and
that it's not actually the government's fault, and their standard of
living is better, and their buying power is better, and so on and so on.

But nothing you can say will alter people's checkbook balances, they
see what is happening every month and you simply cannot spin the figures
in any manner that will erase this.

Conservative radio talk show hosts, no doubt.

Ted

 

Those figures used to be determined by the government, but several
years ago the responsibility for judging the state of the economy was
shifted to a private party, the NBER, which hasn't been accused by
anybody of practicing partisan politics. Even Congress' Congressional
Budget Office has remained honest through both Democratic and
Republican control. OTOH the president's Council of Economic Advisors
has usually been political, although during the Clinton years it
didn't make overly rosy forecasts.

The unemployment rate probably accurately reflects what it's trying to
measure, but it does not indicate the rate of discouraged workers or
what people are being paid.

On average, it hasn't budged much, after inflation, since the early
1970s.

 

I'm not saying Mike Hunt is partisan, but when he saw GW Bush run up
to a 95-year-old lady who was in a wheelchair and punched her in the
face, Mike wondered, "What did that woman do to George to make him
mad?"

 

Having a slight majority in congress is often of little benefit since
you can't pass legislation over the president's veto. You really need
both the congress and the presidency to get your legislation through.

What happens when the Republicans have both the presidency and congress
can be seen with the results of the Bush presidency. The biggest
deficits in history, gutting of key environmental legislation, housing
foreclosures, mega-mergers that reduce the competitive environment
driving up prices, huge increases in the cost of basic necessities like
fuel, food, and health care. This is just what Republicans do.

I was just up in Oregon, where the fishing industry is still reeling
from what Bush's interior department did to them by diverting river
water to corporate agriculture (that supported the Republicans
politically), effectively destroying the salmon industry. Now Bush wants
to cut the aid to the salmon farmers from $170 million to $100 million,
in order to use the $70 million to close a funding gap for the 2010
census.
"http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?cid=111503&sid=1&fid=1"
Here's a problem that Bush's policies created, and he then wants to
screw the people that be caused to lose their livelihood.

It's not exaggerating to say that nearly every major problem the U.S.
faces today is due to the policies pushed through by Republican
presidents all the way back to Reagan. If Obama wins the presidency,
he'll inherit a far bigger mess from W, than Clinton inherited from the
Reagan/HW Bush presidencies. Clinton was fairly successful in undoing a
lot of the damage from Reagan/HW, but Obama will have a far more
difficult task ahead of him.

 

You write as if the Democrats were out of the country for the last 8 years.
As far as I can tell, they are at least as much to blame as the
Republicans - perhaps more so since they are now trying to point fingers and
lay the blame on the other guys.

As for the salmon mess -that is a problem decades in the making - why stop
at Regean - the damning started during FDRs administration. The biggest
difference I see is that the Rebublicans were in office when the
envirowackos finally made a really big stink. Most of the people who want
the damns torn down aren't local to the affected area and won't suffer from
economic losses that will result if the damns are removed but they will have
the satisfaction of knowing they helped save the salmon - well at least the
thought that they might have, or at least they did all they could plus they
managed to push us back towards the stone age by a little bit.

Ed

 

Maybe a little lesson in gov't is needed....

The agencies are managed by lifetime bureaucrats. These were appointed
/ hired when the programs were created and can't be removed easily. No
president has the authority to completely clean house of all the
lifetime bureaucrats except for "cause". The president also has to fund
the bureaucracy which increases every year. Those budgets must grow to
cover staffing and pay raises. Once a program is established, its
nearly impossible to shut it down.

The democrats are controlling congress with an iron fist. If there were
problems, they must carry a significant part of the blame.

More recently, the democrats have proven that they are primarily
interested in critical rhetoric, not action.

By far the biggest budget problems are due to entitlement programs
created by well-meaning but misdirected politicians (mostly democrats).
These programs were used to buy the votes necessary to keep these same
politicians elected and in power (see Chicago politics).

Gutting key environmental legislation? How about the ethanol
requirement pushed by the environmental movement. What a complete
disaster to the food supply and environmental cluster ****. And how
about MTBF? We just had to have that to clean the environment, right?
Got into the watershed and created massive environmental problems.

And let's NOT forget ANWR. I've been there. Have you? You can't even
find an oil well. Just a pipeline that runs south and a few small
pumping facilities. And how about the extinction of all the caribou by
building that pipeline? The population has gwon quite a bit since the
pipeline was installed. And not necessarily due to the pipeline.

So a lot of the "environmental legislation" legislation has been
bullshit suggestions that aren't thought out very well and MUST have
better scientific fact to back those efforts.

The Pacific Northwest salmon "industry" has been in shambles long before
Regan was president. You need to do a little more research and stop
accepting these short-sighted reports. The problems there have a lot
more to do with the damming of just about every major water flow that
salmon used. That river damming effort was directed by FDR. Wasn't he
a Democrat?

Salmon farming is leading to an environmental disaster by introducing
Atlantic salmon into the pacific waters. It has created major problems
in B.C. and threatens salmon runs all along the coast from northern
California to Alaska.

All salmon farming in the Pacific Northwest MUST BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY.

Even if the salmon stocks are one of the five pacific salmon, farming
dilutes the gene pool and will result in damaged to salmon by weakening
the overall population genetics.

You better do a little more study before spewing that kind of crap.

Is this like screwing lumberjacks by taking away their livelihood?

Their livelihood is bordering on an environmental disaster that makes
the Exxon Valdez look like a dog crapping in your backyard?

But Regan came directly AFTER the VERY WORST president in history. The
country still has not recovered from the Carter years.

Every president since Carter has had to weather the disastrous results
of his term. And he lead the new wave of democratic personal political
corruption which reached its peak under Clinton. Even Bush and Cheney
can't compete with Clinton's personal political corruption.


If Obama wins the presidency,

What damage did Clinton inherit? He got a reasonably stable country
that was in the infancy of a technology explosion. He got to ride that
wave for 7 years until the bubble (which was not of his making) burst.
But don't get the idea that he was really showing a budget surplus.
That was just on paper and based on unrealistic economic projections.

We can't forget that Clinton buried the terrorist threat in legal fights
rather than facing that reality head-on. Sandy Berger sealed the
secrecy by stealing the documents that would have exposed the Clinton
cover-up (just one of many cover-ups by Clinton). You can't treat a war
criminal the same was as a jay-walker.

And he was the ONLY president in history to be impeached. Anybody else
that lies to a grand jury spends serious time behind bars regardless of
the excuse. He left office in disgrace and destroyed a lot of data
during the hand-over period to Bush. Clinton was, and remains an asshole.

And as far as Obama is concerned.... Well, he can't possibly come out
of Chicago politics and be clean. But then McCain isn't that great of
an alternative, either.

 

Why don't you get some.

They are controlling with an iron fist but not taking action?

I would say that the biggest problem is interest on the national debt.
It may be slightly smaller than what we spend on defense and HHS, but
we get nothing for it. The second biggest problem is defense. Still
less than HHS but grossly inflated over what is necessary. We spend
more on defense than the rest of the world combined. Who are we
defending against, Mars? The amount of money we have wasted in Iraq
is atrocious. The interest on that debt alone would cover HUD the
budget.

So the politicians are well-meaning but misdirected and they are using
the programs to buy votes. Seems like you need to make up your mind.

Under the Republicans, government functions were privatized by giving
(often no-bid) contracts to their corporate buddies. The outcome, not
surprisingly, is that the cost to the government (us) has skyrocketed.
(To be fair, Clinton is partially responsible as well, but then he
often behaved like a Republican.) Waste and fraud as well as high
profits are to blame.

When did ADM join the environmental movement? Was is before or after
the executives were convicted of price fixing?

MTBF is the alternative to ethanol for purposes of reducing
hydrocarbon emissions. The real problem is automobiles.

Environmental legislation has made a major improvement in the
environment, even as industrialization has expanded at a rapid pace.
Look to places where environmental laws are weak or nonexistent and
wheeze heavy industry is prevalent. Think China and Mexico - they are
environmental disasters. Even in America, pollution is a serious
health threat. Air pollution alone is like a 9-11 every month in
terms of fatalities caused..

 

Not moving anything. They are getting more mileage from bitching than
from doing something for which they may be criticized.

BZZZZZZ.... Wrong again. Entitlement programs. Sorry.

Programs are a failure but they put money in the hands of those who
would keep them in office. i know its pretty deep for you.

No-bid contracts are often awarded when there isn't any organization
that can provide similar services or who cannot provide those services
on the scale needed.

Clinton corruption exceeds any of his predecessors, even Carter.

MTBF was a cluster ****. There's no way to deny the realities of the
U.S. transportation system. Anything else would be idiotic.

The environmental movement hasn't done anything meaningful since the
early 80s. During the last 20+ years, the environmental efforts are
mostly about politics, not reality.

Prove the air-pollution fatalities statement. That is certainly not so
in the U.S. Maybe in the worst polluters like China or Japan, but not
the states.

Provide REAL sources, not those with a political agenda.


Interesting that you couldn't debate the salmon farming disaster. That
is an environmental cluster **** if there ever was one. That pretty
much kills the credibility of the rest of the points of debate. What
"disaster" are you going to cite next that has no basis in fact?